The open education community has seen many, many research articles and presentations on barriers and motivators for Open with faculty and student target populations. What we haven’t seen is the perspective of program leadership, such as department chairs. And, though our leadership may not actively participate in Open in the same way that our faculty do, they often have an administrative role over the Open work faculty are doing. This session will present findings from a dissertation research project that examined barriers to Open with program- and department-level leadership as the target population. In addition to the unique population of this study, the research methods also provide a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between discourse among program administrators and institutional policies which revealed inconsistencies that may create additional barriers, particularly to the sustainability of Open work.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Explore barriers to Open from the perspective of degree program leadership.
- Question whether their program leadership’s understanding of institutional policy is consistent with written documents.
